Polycarbonate resins (may be referred to as “PC” hereinafter) are polymers in which an aromatic diol or an aliphatic diol is coupled by a carbonic acid ester. Out of these, a polycarbonate resin obtained from 2,2-bis(4-hydroxyphenyl)propane (commonly known as bisphenol A) has high transparency, high heat resistance and excellent mechanical properties such as impact resistance and therefore is used in a wide variety of fields such as electric and electronic parts, optical parts, auto parts and mechanical parts in the form of a molded article or a film.
Although bisphenol-A-PC has such excellent characteristic properties, its surface is very soft and easily scratched. To cope with this, Patent Document 1 discloses that the pencil hardness can be increased to about H by using isosorbide produced from a biomass resource as a raw material as compared with bisphenol A-PC which has a pencil hardness of about 4B.
Patent Document 2 and Patent Document 3 disclose co-PC of an aromatic diol and this isosorbide which is used as a comonomer.
However, a polycarbonate copolymer of 9,9-bis(4-hydroxy-3-methylphenyl)fluorene and isosorbide disclosed by Patent Document 2 has a high glass transition temperature and poor flowability. A copolymer of 1,1-bis(4-hydroxyphenyl)decane and isosorbide disclosed by Patent Document 3 has a pencil hardness which is intermediate between that of isosorbide as disclosed by Patent Document 1 and that of bisphenol-A-PC.
Therefore, a material which has high heat resistance, high surface hardness and excellent moldability and is obtained from a biomass resource meeting these requirements and a molded article thereof are as-yet-unknown.    (Patent Document 1) JP-A 2009-79190    (Patent Document 2) JP-A 2010-134232    (Patent Document 3) JP-A 2009-62501